phpBB Weekly

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Download MP3 Episode (28.5 MB)

Episode Duration: 1:14:08
On This Episode: Douglas Bell (Fountain of Apples) and David Lewis (Highway of Life)

Well, this episode of phpBB Weekly certainly did not run as intended. We had planned to have guests from the Tech Podcast Network join us to talk about their experiences with bulletin board-based websites, but to our surprise, none of them have worked with them before! Then, TalkShoe surprised us when they ended up doing a hardware move (and not warning us about it until half an hour into the show), which forced us to record this episode off of TalkShoe. And then, David ended up having to do the second half of the show from a car en route to the airport to catch a flight after the show, resulting in, well, not the greatest audio quality possible. Nevertheless, we did have a good (albeit technical) episode.

On this episode, David and I start out by welcoming the five (count them, five) new members of the Moderator Team, whom are cherokee red, ChrisRLG, darcie, dellsystem, and will_hough. We then take a look back at what caused the phpBB.com Outage last weekend, including what caused it, how serious it was, and how the teams have responded to it.

For the main part of the show, David takes a look at the many changes that will be coming in phpBB 3.0.RC6, including a new location for download.php, new dynamic login forms, the new use of check_form_key() and add_form_key() on all forms, new option so that you don’t have to use MD5 hashing anymore if you don’t want to, checking for the ‘IN_PHPBB’ constant in all files, and a number of other minor changes. MOD authors may want to check and see if their phpBB3 MODs will be RC-6 compatible.

The MOD of the Week is Last Posts Titles for phpBB2 by LEW21 and the Style of the Week is Sniper_Blue for phpBB3 by Sniper_E.

phpBB Weekly is a proud member of the Tech Podcast Network. Check them out for other great technology podcasts.

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Download MP3 Episode (49.3 MB)

Episode Duration: 1:26:12
On This Episode: Douglas Bell (Fountain of Apples), David Lewis (Highway of Life), and Micheal Cottingham (Techie-Micheal)

In this episode of phpBB Weekly, David and I are joined by guest host Micheal Cottingham (Techie-Micheal), the phpBB Support Team Leader. In what is so far our longest episode ever, David, Douglas, and Micheal talk about a number of different things, particularly relating to phpBB3, and also have a good time. MOD authors, server admins, and users concerned about security will really enjoy some of the more technical aspects of the conversation, while regular phpBB enthusiasts will also enjoy other parts of the episode.

David and MIcheal touch on a number of different things in phpBB3, including how phpbb_root_path is now handled as a defined constant instead of a variable, custom template paths, the new phpBB error handler, modularity, the naming of language files in modules, the hidden create_schema_files.php script and the DBMS, and the opening of the new MOD and Styles Databases. They also talk a bit about the various things in phpBB3 that make it more secure, including the “http only” cookie setting, request_var(), the removal of HTML support in posts (improved BBCode), serving avatars and attachments through download.php, SSL, XSS and SQL injection, and leaving vars unset along with the dangers of register_globals. In addition, Micheal asks an interesting question that stumps Douglas (although the jury’s still out on whether or not Douglas was actually stumped).

The MOD of the Week is Clickable forum and topic rows by tumba25, the very first phpBB3 MOD to be approved by the MOD team. The Style of the Week is Poolhall Junkies by Scott Stubblefield, also for phpBB3. Again, if you want to recommend a MOD or Style to us, bookmark it on del.icio.us with the tag “phpbbwmod” or “phpbbwstyle”.

Be sure to join us next week on August 11th for phpBB Weekly #027 where David will talk about phpBB3 modules in detail, for both administrators and MOD authors. Thanks again to Micheal for joining us. Also thanks to phpBB Weekly’s new sponsor, Audible.com. For your FREE audiobook, go to Audible.com/TalkShoe.